Peter Lucas: Collins cut to the core of campaign to destroy Kavanaugh

After all, this is intellectual, sophisticated and progressive Massachusetts, not backwoods Maine.

And Collins is from Caribou, of all places, not Cambridge. She is the descendant of lumberjacks, not professors.

Instead we have one senator who has been in Washington so long that he lives there, not here. That is Sen. Eddie Markey of Chevy Chase, Maryland, who cannot put two sentences together unless they are written out for him.

He called the FBI investigation into the unsubstantiated charges of teenage sexual abuse lodged against Judge Brett Kavanaugh "a cover-up." He knows about cover-ups. His 42-year career in Congress has been nothing but one long cover-up.

The other is a blow-in from Oklahoma, Sen. Elizabeth Warren. She called the investigation "a complete sham."

If anyone should know something about shams it is Warren. Her career is based on the sham of being descended from Native Americans, namely the Cherokee Nation. If she's Cherokee, I'm Sioux.

Both are Democrats, of course.

And both were vehemently opposed to President Donald Trump's nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court from the beginning, and both, following the party line, voted against confirmation on Saturday.

You know that neither Markey nor Warren could articulate their position against Kavanaugh the way Collins did in favor of it in her compelling speech on Friday.

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Instead they went along with the shrieking hate mob that Sen. Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, unleashed upon the country in a scorched-earth effort to defeat Kavanaugh. In the end it was Schumer and the Democrats who got scorched.

Yet, Kavanaugh and his family were scorched as well. Kavanaugh may sit on the court, but he will sit under a dark cloud of vicious smears that will follow him for the rest of his life.

How do you come back from totally unsubstantiated and scurrilous Democrat charges of teenage sexual abuse, gang rape and drunkenness that Markey and Warren bought into? You don't.

It is one thing that the Democrats set out to defeat Kavanaugh. It is another that they sought to destroy him as well. They did not beat him, they just beat him up. His life will never be the same, court or no court.

Which brings us back to Collins and her 16-page, 45-minute masterful speech in which she had to remind Democrats that in the face of the unsubstantiated accusations against you, in the United States you are innocent until proven guilty -- and not the other way around.

"In evaluating any given claim of misconduct, we will be ill-served in the long run if we abandon the presumption of innocence and fairness, tempting though it may be," she said.

And, in the face of the hysterical anti-Kavanaugh mobs whipped up by the Democrats to intimidate pro-Kavanaugh senators, Collins said, "We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy."

Collins, a moderate Republican, said she had in mind the totally unproven allegation that when Kavanaugh was a teenager he "drugged multiple girls and used their weakened state to facilitate gang rape.

"This outlandish allegation was put forth without any credible supporting evidence and simply parroted public statements of others. That such an allegation can find its way into the Supreme Court confirmation process is a stark reminder about why the presumption of innocence is so ingrained in our American consciousness."

While Collins found Christine Blasey Ford's testimony to be "sincere, painful and compelling," she added that it could not be corroborated by anyone, even anyone that Ford said was at the party where the alleged sexual abuse took place.

She said she was disturbed over the suggestion that unless Kavanaugh's nomination was rejected, "the Senate is somehow condoning sexual assault. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every person -- man or woman -- who makes a charge of sexual assault deserves to be heard and treated with respect.

"But today we have come to the conclusion of a confirmation process that has become so dysfunctional it looks more like a caricature of a gutter-level political campaign than a solemn occasion."

And, thanks to Schumer and the Democrats, that is what it became.

Democrats unleashed a frightening wave of hate against Kavanaugh and the senators who voted for him.

There was a time in this country when politicians and people of different political philosophies treated one another with dignity and respect.

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